EducationThe science

What is tolerance, and whether it is necessary in society

Humanity in the process of its evolution has come a long way from the animal herd to modern society. Having emerged from the animal world, people inherited from him a subconscious desire to surround themselves with persons like themselves (people of their tribe) and hostile attitude toward people who have visible differences in appearance, behavior, way of life. This rudiment of the animal state of man gives rise to an intolerant attitude towards "white crows" - people different from the majority. The primitive tribe did not know what tolerance meant: the instinct of saving the tribe dictated to people the care of only children, and to other members of the tribe, different from most of its representatives, people treated hostilely.

At what stage of human development did the notion of tolerance appear? As soon as the tribes began to enter into a peaceful, exchange-based, intercourse with each other, people began to discover "different" for themselves. Xenophobia, that is, the fear of an alien, unaccustomed, began to give way to a craving for a new, unexplored. Increasingly, situations began to occur when people from one tribe settled in the habitats of another, continuing to follow their customs, preserving their language and traditions. In ancient texts, we meet the first moral requirements and calls for tolerance. For example, the Bible (Ex.22: 21, Lev. 19: 33) gives clear instructions to be tolerant, and at the same time reveals the reasons for such tolerant behavior: do not oppress aliens, for you yourself were also alien aliens in Egypt.

Here we see tolerance for foreigners, that is, carriers of another language and another culture. But the modern concept of tolerance is much broader than in the days of antiquity. What does tolerance mean for a modern person? This term means tolerance for other behavior, way of life, views, religion. But in the very word "patience" is already laid the overcoming of something, "suffering" from what we are forced to endure. This is a tribal rudiment when we dislike a different way of life and thoughts. We are still ready to accept, when "others" exist somewhere far away, but when they become our close neighbors, people begin to experience anxiety.

With the course of history, there were many excesses of intolerance towards representatives of a different race, peoples and ethnic groups. Anti-Semitism is not the first and not the last of them. But what if a representative of your nation, a person speaking your language, who in principle, in fact belong to your people, should not differ in any way from the majority, suddenly chooses another faith, another way of life, other values? In the Middle Ages, when norms of tolerant attitude were already adopted to other nationalities , the attitude towards religious dissidents in the depths of European Christianity was still barbaric. About the fact that such tolerance was known in the XIII century, when the inhabitants of the city Beziers were called upon to extradite to the crusaders all heretics living in it, but the inhabitants - although they were mostly Catholics - refused to do so. Then the Crusaders killed all Beziers' residents for the "sin of tolerance".

In the era of religious wars, the need to determine what tolerance is becoming especially urgent. The countries of Europe were divided into "Catholic", where the majority of the population were Catholics, and "Protestant", where the Catholics were a minority. Then the norms of religious tolerance were adopted, according to which representatives of different faiths could freely practice their cult.

Voltaire owns one of the most capacious definitions of what tolerance means: "I deeply dislike your views, sir," he wrote to his opponent, "but I will give my life for you to be able to share them freely." In modern jurisprudence, the principle of tolerance was fixed only in 1995, when UNESCO adopted the Declaration of Principles of Tolerance.

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